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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on May 26, 2006
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2006 1(1):5-17; doi:10.1093/scan/nsl006
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© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Pupillary contagion: central mechanisms engaged in sadness processing

Neil A. Harrison1,2, Tania Singer2, Pia Rotshtein1, Ray J. Dolan1 and Hugo D. Critchley1,2

1Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology and 2Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Alexandra House, University College London, London, UK

Empathic responses underlie our ability to share emotions and sensations with others. We investigated whether observed pupil size modulates our perception of other's emotional expressions and examined the central mechanisms modulated by incidental perception of pupil size in emotional facial expressions. We show that diminishing pupil size enhances ratings of emotional intensity and valence for sad, but not happy, angry or neutral facial expressions. This effect was associated with modulation of neural activity within cortical and subcortical regions implicated in social cognition. In an identical context, we show that the observed pupil size was mirrored by the observers’ own pupil size. This empathetic contagion engaged the brainstem pupillary control nuclei (Edinger–Westphal) in proportion to individual subject's sensitivity to this effect. These findings provide evidence that perception–action mechanisms extend to non-volitional operations of the autonomic nervous system.

Keywords: fMRI; empathy; contagion; pupil; sadness

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Neil Harrison, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Alexandra House, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK. E-mail: n.harrison{at}fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk


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